Right now, President Obama is deciding whether or not to open new coastal areas to offshore drilling. It’s one of the last major environmental and climate decisions he’ll make as president.

The president's Department of the Interior released a draft plan early last year to open up new areas of the Atlantic coast, Arctic and Gulf of Mexico to new offshore drilling.1 The agency is finalizing the plan now, and recent reports suggest President Obama is moving forward with plans for new offshore drilling.2

For the sake of our oceans, and the urgent need to transition from dirty fossil fuels, it would be a huge mistake for President Obama to allow new offshore drilling on federal waters.

Tell President Obama: Don't open our oceans to new offshore drilling.

New offshore drilling directly contradicts and undermines the president's recent climate leadership,3 including helping to lead the way toward the historic international climate change deal last year in Paris, and announcing in January a moratorium on new coal sales on federal lands.

Since rolling out his draft plan last year the need to fight climate change has only gotten more urgent, and the rate at which our planet is warming continues to alarm scientists. As “absurdly warm” temperatures have pushed the Arctic to the lowest winter sea ice levels ever, this week — for the first time in human history — the Northern Hemisphere breached the 2 degrees Celsius warming threshold.4

And of course, the risk of another disaster like the BP oil spill is all too real. Both Democratic presidential candidates,5 and even conservative Democrats like Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, have come out against new Atlantic drilling.6

We can't risk another offshore catastrophe — and the science is clear that 80 percent of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground. President Obama must protect our oceans and our climate by putting a stop to the plans to open new coastal areas to offshore drilling.